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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

There may be no proven answers to this question, but there are certainly some obvious candidates.

Let’s start here: he’s going to lose, and thus will have no power to return favors for rich donors.  This stands in stark contrast to what happened in 2016 – 2020, when Trump looted the U.S. Treasury to provide trillions of dollars of tax cuts for billionaires and the country’s wealthiest corporations.

Even if he’s not indicted on charges of tax evasion, fraud, extortion, witness intimidation, election tampering, theft of classified documents, seditious conspiracy or treason, the majority of Republicans, bless their hearts, prefer someone (anyone?) who isn’t a career criminal and traitor to the United States.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador Nikki Haley (Nimrata Nikki Randhawa Haley) will announce her candidacy for U.S. president on Wednesday.

Not much to see here, folks.  She’s a garden-variety conservative, though she doesn’t sport Donald Trump’s sociopathic tendencies.  She’s not a career criminal, a pathological liar, nor a spoiled child.

As a consequence, we can expect her to perform better in the election than, say, a traitor who desperately tried to overthrow the U.S. federal government.

Exactly how much better, however, remains to be seen.   It will depend on voters’ appetites for the current-day elements of the GOP platform: its enmity to LGBTQs, the poor, people of color, women’s rights, black history, epidemiology, and climate science.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

I believe that religion will come to play an ever-diminishing role in human civilization.

Of course, there is no reason to expect a straight decline, and there are phenomena in the United States right now, e.g.,  QAnon and the evangelicals, that represent huge anomalies.  Yet, if we have an organized society here in 100 years, there will be widespread adoption of science and rejection of superstition.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Love the meme here.

Keep in mind, though, that the American right-wing has a humungous appetite for Ron DeSantis, a total ban on abortion, don’t say gay, removing black history from schools and colleges, forbidding cities from putting COVID restrictions into place, and rejecting climate science.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

To a question currently circulating on social media: What item from the 1970s should be brought back? an old friend answered: a counterculture.

I found that quite thought-provoking.  Don’t we have a counterculture today?

It’s possible that we have one, but it doesn’t look like it did 50 years ago?

Speaking for myself, the ultimate victory of progressive values in today’s world is all we require.  I don’t need long-haired freaky people; I need whatever Bernie Sanders (to pick a progressive at random) and everything that he stands for in terms of environmental stewardship, social equity, quality education and healthcare for all, a solid attempt at world peace, human rights, a single-tiered justice system, etc.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

What Pete Seeger said here was undoubtedly true during his day, i.e., the last quarter of the 20th Century, when conservatives had defensible values.

As a progressive, I didn’t agree with those values, but I enjoyed worthwhile discussions with intelligent individuals on the rightful role of government in our lives, equal rights for all, the legitimacy of the military-industrial complex, the regulation of free trade and the use of subsidies, trade-off between and the use of America’s strength in protecting our financial interests at the expense of the world’s people.

Now, most “conservatives” can’t spell “military-industrial complex.”  Today’s issues are banning abortion, rejecting climate science, locking up Dr. Fauci, covering up the actual source of the January 6th insurrection, and protecting George Santos’ seat in congress.  I’d rather have a root-canal operation than a protracted conversation on any of these subjects.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

The meme here is funny, and people who profit from spreading hatred are disgusting human beings.

That said, there is nothing unique, or even rare about Rush Limbaugh.  He’s one of an uncountable number of the brigade of the nasty media whores who came into prominence over the last 30 years, since +/- the dawn of Fox News in the 1990s, whose stock in trade is making hateful, gullible fools that much more mean and stupid.

If Limbaugh deserves to burn in hell, so do dozens of the other similar hate-monger harlots, not to mention the majority of Republicans in the U.S. Congress.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

If you’re looking for a bit of inspiration re: loving our planet, this may be for you.

It’s a reminder that achieving a sustainable civilization is worth the effort required.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

In his early campaigning leading up to the 2024 presidential election, Trump calls for certifying ‘patriotic’ teachers, and cutting funds to schools teaching CRT.

Obviously, this has legs among today’s extreme right-wing, as it speaks to a stark differentiation from the “radical left.”

Having come from a Quaker school, I have to laugh when I think of how any of my teachers would have reacted to being restricted as to how or what they taught.  Approaching education with political blinders on was the very last thing that our school (Penn Charter in Philadelphia) would consider.

In fact, though my parents were distinctly conservative, they somehow knew that trusting a 300-year-old academic institution to do the right thing was a solid idea.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

The poem here seems timely in our world, doesn’t it?

If our civilization is to survive, it will because there are plenty of folks who, whether natively or by way of being taught, are willing to “be the ones.”

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